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News Releases

  • Death Penalty

    Gary Graham is scheduled to be executed at 7 P.M. Eastern Time. The following analysts and critics of the death penalty are available for interviews: WILLIAM HARRELL Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Harrell said today: “We are outraged by the board’s failure to halt this execution. The judicial system has failed us, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has failed us and the governor has failed us. This is the greatest proof that the time for a moratorium on executions in Texas is now.” The president of the board of the ACLU of Texas, Greg…

  • “Prosperity and Progress”?

    Inequalities, Health-Care Coverage, Estate Tax CHARLES ANDREWS The author of the forthcoming From Capitalism to Equality, Andrews said today: “Before we celebrate the economy’s alleged prosperity and progress, we should tally the exhaustion it is causing. The average husband-and-wife family works six hours today for every five hours worked in 1979. The percentage of employees who work 49 hours a week or more rose from 13 percent in 1976 to 20 percent today. If there is a bit of prosperity today in our role as consumers, the deeper truth is that today’s economy consumes people’s lives.” SARA NICHOLS National spokesperson…

  • Interviews Available: Father’s Day

    WILL GLENNON Glennon is author of Fathering: Strengthening Connection with Your Children No Matter Where They Are, for which he interviewed 180 fathers, aged 15 to 87, almost all of whom cried during their interviews. He said today: “Fathers need to get deeply engaged in the upbringing of their children. Fathers don’t want to be isolated, children don’t want them to be disconnected and mothers don’t want them to be absent — physically or emotionally. But we have patterns of how we raise our children which keep fathers distant, cost them emotionally, cause pain in their relationships, making boys more…

  • Arafat’s Visit to U.S.

    The following analysts are available for interviews about the U.S. visit by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat scheduled to begin on Wednesday: NASEER ARURI Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, former board member of Amnesty International and author of The Obstruction of Peace: The U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians, Aruri said today: “The approach of Syria’s Hafez Assad toward Israel was based on equality, land for peace, an international framework, and normalization with Israel after it fully withdraws from occupied territory. By contrast, Arafat’s approach — despite lip service to the contrary — is open-ended. It would…

  • Study Finds Conservative Think Tanks Predominant

    Brookings Leads; Left-of-Center Think Tanks Decrease WASHINGTON — A study released today found that conservative think tanks and the centrist Brookings Institution dominated much of the national media debate last year. Of the 25 leading think tanks studied, Brookings had the most citations (2,883), twice as many media mentions as the next-ranked conservative/libertarian Cato Institute (1,428 cites). The conservative Heritage Foundation, which had rivaled Brookings in prominence a few years ago, has fallen to third place (1,419 cites), while the conservative American Enterprise Institute (1,263 cites) is the fourth most cited think tank in the U.S. media. These four think…

  • Analysts Available on Microsoft Decision

    The following analysts are available to comment on the Microsoft decision: NORMAN HAWKER Hawker is a law professor at Western Michigan University specializing in antitrust issues. JUDY SLOAN Sloan is a professor at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. ROBERT LANDE Lande is senior research scholar at the American Antitrust Institute and professor of law at the University of Baltimore. More Information For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 More Information More Information

  • Interviews Available on Germany and Russia

    MARTIN A. LEE Author of The Beast Reawakens, a book on neofascism, Lee said today: “President Clinton’s visit to Germany comes at a time when that country is mired in a major political scandal, involving secret slush funds and illegal influence-peddling by big business. The scandal has resulted in the fall from grace of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and several other leaders of the Christian Democratic Union, now the main opposition party in Germany. Thus far, U.S. officials have yet to acknowledge the role that the U.S. government played in setting the stage for this scandal. For years, Washington turned…

  • Interviews on “Missile Defense”

    WILLIAM HARTUNG Senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-author of the recent report “Tangled Web: The Marketing of Missile Defense, 1994-2000,” Hartung said today: “In its ongoing effort to ‘triangulate’ by co-opting Republican issues, the Clinton administration has met right-wing missile defense boosters more than half way. Meanwhile, Republicans have stepped up their calls for an elaborate, multi-tiered system akin to Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated Star Wars scheme. The nation’s four major missile contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW — are looking to missile defense to revive them from mismanagement and technical problems that have slashed…

  • United – U.S. Airways

    United Airlines said today it intends to buy U.S. Airways. The following analysts are available for interviews: PAUL HUDSON Executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, Hudson said today: “If this merger is approved without major divesting of routes and other restrictions, the ‘Big Six’ will quickly become the ‘Big Three’ and U.S. airline passengers will be the major losers. No airline should control more than 25 percent to 30 percent of the nation’s airline seats or over 40 percent of seats in a particular region. This merger would give United dominant control of most routes in the Northeast…

  • Interviews Available on International Issues

    SIMONA SHARONI Author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Sharoni is currently a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She said today: “If there is any relationship between the recent mini-intifada and the negotiations, it is that the two issues that have been central to the protests — the Palestinian refugees and the release of political prisoners — have not been seriously addressed. Those who are familiar with the Oslo Accords, its supplements and its rocky implementation should not be surprised that Palestinians have once again taken to the streets…. If Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon is designed to…

  • Civil Liberties: A Sense of Crisis

    This weekend, hundred of grassroots activists and dozens of organizations are gathering for the “Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights” conference near Washington, D.C. Among the groups participating are the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the National Lawyers Guild…

  • U.S. Occupation of Iraq: * $87 Billion * U.N. Vote

    PHYLLIS BENNIS ennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis. She said today: “As the Bush administration vetoes a resolution supported by most of the U.N. Security Council criticizing Israel’s theft of Palestinian land in the guise of construction…

  • * That’s (Political) Entertainment! * That’s (Dubious) “Iraq Stabilization”

    NANCY SNOW Snow is author of Propaganda, Inc. and assistant professor of communications at California State University at Fullerton. She said today: “What made Arnold the insta-media darling that decided this election? Psychological warfare. His political bombshell on ‘The Tonight Show’ was not unlike the cerebral style Arnold displayed in the 1977 documentary ‘Pumping Iron,’…

  • After the Recall

    RUTH WILSON GILMORE Gilmore is a professor of geography and African American studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She said today: “Some fundamental contradictions deepened on Election Day. More California voters cast ballots against the so-called ‘racial privacy’ act [Proposition 54] than in favor of the successful recall. Here we have an activist…

  • Schwarzenegger’s Enron Meeting, Hitler Statement

    DOUG HELLER Consumer advocate with the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Heller said today: “Internal Enron e-mails we have obtained confirm that Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with then-Enron head Ken Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001. The meeting with Enron…

  • Two Years Later in Afghanistan: Enduring Freedom?

    SONALI KOLHATKAR Co-director of Afghan Women’s Mission, Kolhatkar said today: “On the second anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan this October 7, the status of the first target in the ‘War on Terror’ is nothing for Bush and friends to write home about. To date, none of the warlords has ever been held accountable…

  • Interviews Available: Wilson, Kay, Iraq Fines

    PHILIP AGEE A former CIA officer, Agee wrote the book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, which named CIA officers and prompted the government to enact the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Agee now runs a travel services business in Havana. He said today: “The outing of Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife as an undercover CIA officer is…

  • The California Recall: Interviews Available

    GRAY BRECHIN Brechin is the author of Farewell, Promised Land: Waking From the California Dream. He said today: “As the state’s public services and infrastructure have precipitously deteriorated, an ever-angrier electorate has sought sound-bite answers orchestrated by invisible public relations firms.” More Information RUTH WILSON GILMORE Gilmore is a professor of geography and African American…

  • Civil Liberties in Crisis: Interviews Available

    ADELE WELTY, [via David Potorti] Welty is a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. She lost her son, Timmy, a firefighter who was one of the first to arrive at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. She said today: “I support Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s bill, which would roll back certain sections…

  • Context: Governing Council’s Crackdown on Al-Jazeera

    “You know, I just came in from Baghdad, and there are now over 100 newspapers in the free press in Iraq in a free Iraq, where people are able to say whatever they wish. People are debating, people are discussing — something they have not done for decades.” — Donald Rumsfeld, in response to protesters,…

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